


Descending Roads of Memories Lost

by DeyaniraSan



Series: Empty Glimpses Of A Future Passed [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Arlathan, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Immediately after the events of the DLC, Lavellan is a Sominari, Post-Canon, Post-Trespasser, Solas you egg, The Fade, flashbacks to the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 18:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12753354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaniraSan/pseuds/DeyaniraSan
Summary: She searched for him, uncaring of what it meant as she tried to reach for him in his dreams as he so often had tried to reach her, yet failed every time. So, she searched, aching and lost - unable to run as she wished to in the real world tied physically by an unwilling duty to a disbanded order - until she delved so deeply there was no hope to ever return.She continued to do so until she staggered into controlling her new abilities, realised that she could use them to bend the fabric of the Fade to her will, twisting it further and further to unveil the past. And just like that she realised she found a new way to learn, a way she could understand the world that had been, and perhaps anything to help the world as it was now.





	Descending Roads of Memories Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This fic is part of a series but it can be read as a standalone, though I highly suggest reading the other parts too since they are connected and form a bigger picture! Happens immediately after the events of Trespasser, and my take on how the Inquisitor would deal with Solas' betrayal. Also features my take on Arlathan. Considering the events of the game, I would also assume Lavellan has the ability to control the Fade, and thus she might be a Sominari so I am exploring that! Hope you enjoy.

The ruins flickered like a translucent memory overlapping against glimpses of surreal reality in waves; a glimmering image of the past embracing over the present in a cacophony of sorrow and wonder, beauty and cruelty in one image.

The Fade was restless tonight, its shadows stretching deeper, a tumult rising deep from within its fickle nature as it was wont to do, memories of the ancient intertwining like jagged pieces underneath a green sky. Ellana watched, awe interwoven with an undefined emotion of estranged melancholy how the ancient temple morphed into existence underneath her gaze before her steps guided her forwards, her bare feet softly touching and rippling onto the fabric of the dream as she stalked beneath the grand arches of the entrance.

Whispers flew by her ears as she stalked in the antrum, her eyes taking it all in, collapsed ruins underneath the weight of forgotten millennia, vines twining around them in a fragile embrace, while glimpses of the past showed golden grandeur, a virulent flow of ghostly presences gone in a second like wispy lights snatched out by the shadows, a mist of tranquillity and loss surrounding the old places of her people. She paid them no mind, her violet eyes narrowing as the Fade flamed underneath her influence, a restless push and pull before giving in, her magic coursing into the well of the world itself bending, twisting, rewinding, the image coming into focus with clarity as the past was brought forth forcefully and dug up unwillingly. When she finished, her magic was flaring underneath her skin, a restless beast of burning light and power, while in front of her the once forgotten glory of Arlathan lay bared.

Where once were ruins, spiralling staircases winding around ancient tries towards the terraces lay, its steps carved with intricate details depicting words and blessing of knowledge, silver and dragonite mingling even in the smallest carving. The stones on which she walked glowed blue with magic, the canopy of trees arching and twisting with magnificent pride towards the sun, filtering its light, while glass screens protected the upper levels from the harsh weather. It felt like nature had been conquered, tamed like a beast and converted upon itself underneath the influence of the construction, bark and cold stone vibrating underneath her fingers as she climbed up, up, towards the glassy sky where she could see glass domes and towers mingling with the canopy.

The place was not a temple, but the entrance towards a market, and as she passed through the antrum, ghostly whispers of elvhen reached her ears, elven forms passing and turning through the opulent alleys, merely flickers of what it once had been. It lasted for a few seconds, then quiet and solitude returned once more as the Fade swallowed the imagery, the whole place reverberating with loss. Only the Eluvians carved into the walls setting gave indication that the memory had once had been real, that the elves she had seen had once walked these same paths before they no longer were able to. The whispers in her mind were a restless song, flickers of sharp jabs and misplaced words, a static fumbling through her brain as she stalked further and further through empty halls of gilded pride that had eons ago lost their shine, alive only through the power of her magic and invocations.

She did not know why she did this; there was nothing to be found here but flickering ghosts and mingled memories of lost phrases uttered in times that she had no place even imagining. There were no answers for her to find her, no purpose for why she was awake like this in a dream, her soul wondering so far away from her body. Yet, even as she knew so, she could not stop, her explorations an avid call she succumbed too almost each night, her consciousness wandering the paths unexplored and long ago forgotten as she searched to find an answer to the yearning in her veins.

She simply kept walking further and further in, while openings turned into hallways which only turned into more plazas where once had been mingling social places that would have put the Orlesian restaurants and cafes to shame, frescos on the walls, gold mingling with colour and lazurite, glimpses of stalls selling fineries she could only have dreamed off… the magnificent lost pride of her people, the true memory of what their echoed, clipped stories did not even dream of getting right. As she stopped, her hand – her left hand forever gone in the reality, but never missing in the Fade, as if the existence of the Anchor itself had ingrained into the memory of the Fade itself – came to rest upon smooth marble on which runes for magic flared to life in response to her magic.

_A fluke_. There was no magic left in the whole world which could bring back the power of the lost Elvhen Empire.

And what an Empire it had been, she had learned. After the Winter Palace, after she had been betrayed, her life had turned into an upside-down storm, fragments of reality itself crumbling underneath her fingers, beliefs she didn’t even hold so dear blown into the winds with merciless sorrow as she succumbed in an ocean of uncertainty drowning – drowning, drowning, drowning with each impossible shivered breath she took whilst she _knew_ – with nothing left to hold onto.

She had not mean to stalk into the Fade. But as reality grew darker and grimmer, as the events started to slowly sink into her mind with sharper clarity, shock and grief giving in to a pain so sharp it felt like hot iron branded underneath the cavity of her chest, her days grew cruel and nights restless, unable to even phantom sleep as questions rolled, and rolled, and rolled, scenarios and mussing, as her desperation grew with each uncertainty laid bared in her mind.

The Veil had been created where once magic ruled and flowed as freely as the air she breathed, her mind supplied as her hand traced reports and scouted maps uselessly as no new information was to be found.

_A from the Fade a memory sprang forward._ _Ethereal laughter immortalised in time resounding in her ears as two elvhen children dressed in fine garbs lined with gold appeared out of nothingness running one after another, their happiness a strong emotion which permeated through millennia of sorrow._ _One of them turned towards the other, the elven language rolling over his lips as prayers in common tongue had rolled from hers, before motioning for his friend, both of them dashing in between adults and stalls with undiluted happiness_. Blankly, she wondered if they had survived the fall, how their descendants have suffered in what was yet to come in the moment of forever caught in the misty fogs of the Fade.

The Evanuris had been real. The Forgotten Ones had been real. Arlathan had been real, an empire she could not even imagine the glory of, its secrets as beautiful as they were dark and twisted, vallaslin marking of slaves, immortal mages posing as gods. A dry laugh escaped her lips as the reality of having had one those said gods as a lover hit her once more.

_Underneath the branches of a peach tree a couple shyly held hands. The woman smiled as she turned towards her lover, her long hair braided in a more complicated pattern than any of her most talented lethallin could even hope to create in the hair of her clan members. The silver locks fell in waves from her complicated braid over her shoulders and back as she turned to her lover, a dark haired tall elf with hair as magnificent as hers who only stroked her cheeks lovingly. Giddy, she slapped his hands away before taking one of his in her small one and dragging him around and towards an unknown place in the plaza._

She could not help the painful stab through her chest, the pain so real she felt the whole memory of the Fade tremble with her grief as one elven word echoed in her ears with roaring clarity of painful grief.

_Vhenan._

As days turned into months, as their searches failed, and their spies turned only with whispers her frustrations grew, irritation borne out of hopelessness, an intangible combination of complex feelings, her fury, her sorrow, her pain, her betrayal, her love, all twisted and turned until the waking moments were as much of a disappointment as the perilous dreams haunting her in nightmares each night tantalising and hellish, a purgatory of wishing and receiving and a hell of memories she could not forget.

The Inquisition was gone. The world’s support was gone. Her arm was gone. Her friends were gone. Her ties to whatever family she had ever had in the Clan were gone. Her vhenan was gone. And the world seemed about to end, and it was a reflex, as easily as shrugging on her armour to go into battle to assume she would have to save it again, to stop it from being torn apart, even if she never stopped herself to even ask why she should do so. She did not want to know how much of her drive was selfish. She did not even think could recover if she gave in and pondered for whom she now fought. Whom she was searching for.

What she needed instead was knowledge.

_Merchants whispered what once had probably been boisterous words full of life, convincing and friendly trying to persuade the customers to buy their goods. Mindlessly, she stopped and peered at the delicate robes they sold, material as smooth as water and as elegant as anything Celene had ever worn, cuts on the sides, the dress splitting towards its front. There were no sleeves on any of them, the arms meant to be free and sun kissed. Her fingers touched it briefly, and the memory disintegrated into green smoke beneath her fingertips, ash and dust, impossible to touch, the Fade presenting not recreating, the reality as thin and phony as the arm hanging limply by her side. Not real, not real, yet the words in her ears were real, and the sun’s rays playing an intricate dance through the canopy of leaves to fight against a cool background of playful shadows were real, and she felt a deep yearning for times she had no right to yearn for._

But knowledge was now impossible to achieve; not the kind she needed anyway, the possibility to receive the answers she needed gone, gone, _gone_. And as she realised this, her heart gave a pang, because in the past she had had many advisors but only one of them had enchanted her with his stories, his vigil a kind support she had come to rely upon. And his leaving felt even more like a void than before because she had lost more than her heart, her soul and her love to him, she had lost a friend too, she had lost his stories and his intelligence and advice, making her want to scream in frustration because how could she go on and fight against all this from all things?! She felt lost, at war with someone she could not even begin to fight, and it was only partially because of her unwillingness to do… She did not even begin to comprehend how to do so.

Cassandra and Leliana might be fooled, but she knew Solas. She knew his mind, even as she had not known his secrets, knew the ruthlessness and intelligence, knew how basically he had first moulded her to be who she was now. For a while it had seemed impossible to even begin considering opposing him even as she burned bright with the conviction of knowing if she did not try no one would, her days growing hopeless and nights ruthless, nightmares plaguing her. Yet, the worst had been the dreams of him, treacherous glimpses that cut deeper than any wound. Of course, she knew it was him, but no matter how hard she tried to reach him she only failed, her hand outstretched towards nothingness as she woke up, her missing limb a reminder of her missing heart.

  _“Watch out, da’len.”_

_“…and I have said to him...”_

_“By Elgar’nan you will pay for this!”_

_Whispers reached her eyes, tangles of the elvhen, lost words she had not first understood, fragments of missing conversations she had not comprehended for a long time. Yet, slowly she had learned, she had delved, and each night she spent bent over faded memories of texts, pieces of conversations reaching her ears as she dug deeper and deeper into forgotten knowledge, until the familiar script that was so foreign started to make sense. The whispers had become ardent, and she simply let them take over, centuries of information pouring in her mind almost making her feel as if her own head was going to be split apart with the weight of it all, guiding, yet firm, telling, yet screaming, a cacophony that confused more at first than it helped. But slowly the words started to piece together, the syllables turning familiar._

_The language of her ancestors felt like ash upon her tongue, the circumstances of her learning it dampening its achievement. There was no victory in the pain she inflected upon herself to learn because there was no way to even begin to fight an old god when she had been this clueless._

So, she had concentrated into studying. At her request Leliana scoured all southern Thedas and beyond for the tomes she asked for, but it was not enough by far. And with Morrigan gone, she did not know whom to even turn to trust and ask. She could not even begin to trust anyone on this after so many things had first hand turned out to be a lie.

So, she delved within herself.

Until that point, she had never actually tried to master the power of the Well of Sorrows. She had never explored deeper than what had been required of her, and after everything, there had been no time to even consider doing so. After all, the whispers only appeared as jumbled voices, meaningless fragments that haunted her silences. With nowhere less to turn she turned inwards, and asked. And asked. Painfully so, she continued asking, until the jumbles turned coherent, until she could make sense of things that appeared in the form of ancient mocking riddles, her predecessors unwilling to part their knowledge as they lived within her. Cruel, cruel spirits harbouring thoughts in her minds driving her mad with intangible words meant to scream but strong enough only to seep at her crumbling psyche. She set out to tame them.

But even so, she could not fight millennia of knowledge with only this, and as her misery grew, her steps brought her unwillingly in her dreams, in which other things of an entirely other nature seemed to lurk. Her heart hopelessly yearned for a sight of him, for a touch, _for a word_ because their goodbye had been incomplete, truncated. It had been so cruel when she had first felt his presence in her dreams, the power of her desperation tearing the Fade itself apart as she woke up with tears brimming in her eyes and a sob clutched in her throat unwilling call out the name she wished to scream. As reality turned sourer she dreamt, but instead of sleeping she lay awake, and went into the Fade deeper and deeper, her explorations an irony of how once she had been lied to. Her gift of sleep walking had always been there; but all mages knew to fear the dreams and the Fade itself for what it could be lurking in it. And so, had she… until him. Until he had shown her what the Fade could be. She hated him. She wanted to thank him, but then again conflicting, opposing emotions always seemed to brim at the forefront of her mind these days.

She searched for him, uncaring of what it meant as she tried to reach for him in his dreams as he so often had tried to reach her, yet failed every time. So, she searched, aching and lost - unable to run as she wished so in the real world tied physically by an unwilling duty to a disbanded order - until she delved so deeply there was no hope to ever return. And slowly, she walked into the places that could have belonged to his people – and she wanted to bitterly laugh, because she now understood how they have never had the same people - hopelessly hoping, a fool’s wish making her hope to find a connection where there was none. She continued to do so until she staggered into controlling her new abilities, realised that she could use them to bend the fabric of the Fade to her will, twisting it further and further to unveil the past. And just like that she realised she found a new way to learn, a way she could understand the world that had been, and perhaps anything to help the world as it was now.

And so, in her dreams she explored; awake she studied, all the while her heart withered and broke, the jagged pieces of glass digging deeper and deeper into bleeding wounds of the void lingering on the inside.


End file.
